Mary-Frances O’Connor’s “The Grieving Body: How the stress of loss can be an opportunity for healing”
Mary-Frances O’Connor’s The Grieving Body: How the stress of loss can be an opportunity for healing is an interesting book. It is complicated. While she offers helpful and practical advice to those grieving, it is intertwined with her own experience and living with MS and the anxiety it brings. She talks frankly about deep sadness and despair that can engulf a person when mourning the loss of a loved one whereas in her case it is also intermingled with bouts of depression. Challenging but she offers ways of tackling it and use this terrible sense of loss as a way of healing oneself and pushing ahead. Death anxiety is a state of being that exists for many of us. It is our fear of separation from loved ones. It is at the basic neuro-biological level. She is clearly that bereavement can affect the immune system. Also, the concept of dying of a broken heart is a very real thing. It is not imaginary. Bereavement is a period of increased risk for illness and death, and recognising this should lead to better medical care. Bereavement is a monumental stress event and it should be treated in such a manner. Grief is not a disease, but it has physiological effects, just as pregnancy is not a disease, but it increases the risk of hypertension and gestational diabetes.
In this book, the doctor, first analyses the physiological effects of grief on our bodies and then offers practical advice on how to heal ourselves.
Much to think about except those who have been recently impacted by a death in their family, may find it hard to read. Nevertheless, persist. Who knows, it may help in adjusting to a new life without our loved ones.
11 May 2025
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